Northside Volunteer Fire Department officials are proud of their new fire hall and, with a public open house planned for this weekend, they hope it will help attract more volunteer firefighters.
“It’s a very skookum building,” said Norm Penner, deputy fire chief of the department, “and a big step up from what we had.”
Since completion Northside volunteers have been moving into the new facility and have already started to use it for their regular Monday night training sessions.
Previously, Northside didn’t have proper facilities to train volunteers or hold meetings.
“We’d have to light a fire outside to stay warm,” said Penner. The old building was without heat and the roof leaked. Now they have a building with a large training room that will be open for other fire departments in the region to use and a meeting room for debriefing firefighters after attending a call. Also included in the facility are a sleeping room for on-call members, showers, a kitchen and office space.
The new hall, built to post-disaster standards, was constructed by local contractors and integrates green features which set the facility apart from other fire halls in the Malaspina and Powell River fire regions. The four apparatus bays where fire trucks are parked have oil separators built into the drains so oil from the trucks doesn’t contaminate waste water. A hot water on demand system ensures that energy is minimized. Four carbon monoxide air vacuums, hanging from the ceiling in the bays, filter truck exhaust. Penner said the filters work so well, they could run the trucks with the doors closed without a problem if need be. The filters are also connected to switches on the roll-up garage doors. When the doors open, the filters turn on.
“It’s built to a standard that would withstand earthquakes,” said Sean McGinn, manager of community services at Powell River Regional District. “If everything else has fallen down, this building will still be here and we’ll be able to get trucks in and out.”
McGinn said the building would work well as a centre of operations in the aftermath of a disaster, with its own power generators and water supply.
He explained that many people in the area rely on electric well pumps for water. In a disaster where there are widespread power outages, residents wouldn’t have access to drinking water. The building has a 30,000 gallon rainwater collection system, which has been filling up with the recent spell of wet weather. The new system will give the fire hall more water security, as they previously relied on a 10,000 gallon reservoir from the park across the road.
“We had a fire north of town here and we put 45,000 gallons of water on it,” said Penner. “That’s a lot of water when you’re dealing with 3,000 gallons at a time.”
The combined capacity of all the trucks that carry water for Northside is 3,000 gallons.
Northside currently has 18 regular volunteers, but as the role of members has begun to include a larger responsibility as first responders to car accidents, Penner said he hopes the new facility will attract more volunteer firefighters.
Northside is opening the facility from 2 to 4 pm on Saturday, December 8, located at 8540 Plummer Creek Road, for public tours. Volunteers from the hall will be firing up the barbecue for the event and demonstrating fire rescue equipment.
